BARTOW | Lawyers for condemned murderer Nelson Serrano were back in court Thursday seeking to force state analysts to process about a dozen fingerprints from the 1997 crime scene that had gone unidentified at that time.

By SUZIE SCHOTTELKOTTETHE LEDGER

BARTOW | Lawyers for condemned murderer Nelson Serrano were back in court Thursday seeking to force state analysts to process about a dozen fingerprints from the 1997 crime scene that had gone unidentified at that time.

Prosecutors challenged the lawyers' request, saying it wouldn't change the outcome of the case even if the fingerprints were identified.

But Circuit Judge Donald Jacobsen agreed with Serrano's lawyers Thursday, saying he saw no harm in running the prints through the statewide and national fingerprint databases.

"It doesn't seem to be an onerous procedure on the state just to run these," he said. "I'm going to grant the motion for comparisons to be run, without any prejudice for the use of the comparisons, if there are any."

Serrano, 74, was convicted in 2006 of murdering four people at the Erie Manufacturing plant in Bartow in December 1997. Serrano had been one of three partners in the business and had been ousted as the company's president six months before the killings.

He was sentenced to death in June 2007 for gunning down one of his partners and another partner's son, daughter and son-in-law. Authorities said he traveled to Atlanta on business and secretly returned to Polk County to commit the crimes, using assumed names to rent cars and book airline reservations.

The crime remains the worst mass murder in Polk County history.

Last year, the Florida Supreme Court upheld the conviction and death sentence, and the case now has come back to circuit court on appeal.

Miami defense lawyer Roy Black, a frequent legal commentator in the media who recently successfully defended William Kennedy Smith on rape charges in Palm Beach County, is representing Serrano in his appeal. Black and Miami lawyer Marcia Silvers also have filed a motion seeking DNA testing on evidence collected at the crime scene.

Black, who participated in Thursday's hearing by conference call, argued that 15 years have passed since the fingerprints gathered in 1997 were run through the state and national databases, and those databases have expanded since that time.

He said prosecutors and law enforcement officers believed the prints were worth processing at that time, so they're worth processing now.

"They thought it was important at that time," he said, "and that established the relevancy."

Assistant State Attorney John Aguero argued the prints were taken from areas in the Erie Manufacturing offices that were open to the public, rendering the prints largely irrelevant.

"It wouldn't matter if someone else's prints were identified," he said Thursday. "It wouldn't identify the perpetrator and wouldn't lead to undermining the outcome of the trial."

He said a fingerprint wouldn't overcome the circumstantial evidence in the case.

Authorities initially discounted Serrano as a suspect after confirming that he had been in Atlanta that day.

But further investigation in 2001 led to the discovery of Serrano's fingerprint on a parking garage ticket at Orlando International Airport the day of the murders, which broke his alibi.

By that time, Serrano had returned to his native Ecuador, but Florida authorities worked with officials there to have him deported.

[ Suzie Schottelkotte can be reached at suzie.schottelkotte@theledger.com or 863-533-9070. ]